Saturday, March 15, 2008

Daily Dedroidify: Reality Tunnel

From now I will post an article from my main site on the blog every day. The first: Your Reality Tunnel
"Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." Albert Einstein

Reality tunnel (aka world view, world model, reference frame, intentionality etc) is a term coined by Timothy Leary and popularised by Robert Anton Wilson. It refers to the concept that with a subconscious set of filters formed from their beliefs and experiences, everyone interprets this same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder". This is not necessarily meant to imply that there is no objective truth; just that our access to it is mediated through our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors. The individual world each person occupies is said to be their reality tunnel. The term can also apply to groups of people united by beliefs: we can speak of the fundamentalist Christian reality tunnel, the scientific materialist reality tunnel, the libertarian reality tunnel, etc

The concept of reality tunnels fits in nicely with the scientific concept of confirmation bias by which we tend to notice and assign significance to observations that confirm our prior beliefs, while filtering out or rationalizing away observations that do not fit with what we believe. This helps to explain why reality tunnels are usually transparent to their inhabitants. While it seems most people take their beliefs to correspond to the "one true objective reality," Robert Anton Wilson emphasizes that each person's reality tunnel is their own artistic creation, whether they realize it or not.

Through various techniques one can break down old reality tunnels and impose new reality tunnels by removing old filters and replacing them with new ones, new perspectives on reality - at will. This is achieved through various processess of deprogramming using meditation, controlled use of hallucinogens, neuro-linguistic programming, cybernetics, hypnosis, bio-feedback devices, and forcibly acting out other Reality Tunnels. Thus, it is believed one's Reality Tunnel can be widened to take full advantage of human potential and experience reality on more positive levels! Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising is (among other things) a guidebook to the exploration of various reality tunnels, breaking through the current one and opening our minds to a whole new world.

The most ideal Reality Tunnel would be the most open one. 'Believe Nothing; Explore Everything' the main philosophy, so instead of travelling between separate Reality Tunnels you create one that encompasses everything. Beliefs are just one's own dogma, they filter out too much of reality. Catmas however are relative metabeliefs, or flexible temporary opinions of which many, even contradictory, can be held in one's consciousness simultaniously. This way we have a larger map of reality and thus a wider perspective. We could achieve a lot more progress if we could evolve beyond belief systems, which are defended emotionally, not rationally. Wether religious, ideological, political (political bias study link) or even scientific. When you are able to open your mind to many differing and conflicting views that hold their own merit, there will be much less or no confirmation bias on your part as you are able to make many new connections. Consider ideas, ideologies, viewpoints, etc like toys. You know you can't play with one toy all the time before it gets boring, so you switch toys often. Believe nothing, it is the highest form of intelligence! (and absolutely necessary in researching history or how to consciously evolve.) See the Reality Tunnel wikipedia page
 

Reality Quotes

Do you know, that there may be no ultimate truth?

"Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission."
Robert Anton Wilson

"Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking."
Robert Anton Wilson

"We can all see how other people's BS (belief system or bullshit :p) makes them blind and "stupid" at times, but we find it very hard to notice how our own BS is doing the same to us. This is what anthropologists call 'acculturalization.' Following Gurdjieff, I prefer to call it hypnosis... Every politician knows how to induce hypnosis, and very damned few people on the whole planet know how to de-hypnotize themselves. The world is not governed by facts or logic. It is governed by BS (belief systems)."
Robert Anton Wilson

1. Never believe totally in anybody else's BS.
2. Never believe totally in your own BS.
Robert Anton Wilson

Much more quotes here


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